Moon over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

You may remember I reviewed "Rivers of London" last summer. "Moon over Soho" is the sequel. In the last review, amongst other things, I said:

1. "You know those detective stories where the male lead character meets attractive female characters and they rapidly find themselves in an explicit sex scene? This isn't one of those stories." and
   
2. "The fact that much of the romantic tension still remains at the end of the book suggests to me that the author intends to develop the relationships between these characters over several books..."

The first thing I should say is that Moon over Soho fails to follow in the footsteps of those observations. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Minor spoilers may follow, but I'll not give anything significant away.

Rivers of London ended up with one of the potential love interest characters seriously injured following the events described in that book. While she does have a minor role in this book, her part in the story is surprisingly brief and she only really exists here to make our hero feel a bit guilty, every now and then. The other potential love interest character from the first book doesn't feature here at all, so maybe I got the wrong impression from the first book, but anyway.

The story carries on with our hero, the apprentice to the supernatural-investigating police inspector, investigating two different but connected magical murder inquiries. In one, a series of apparently healthy and very talented jazz musicians die of 'natural causes' in unusual circumstances. In the other, a series of men die in very painful ways, apparently at the, erm, hands of a murderer with 'vagina dentata'. Nuff said. (Google it if you need more info, which you really don't.)

The story is entertaining and moves along at a good pace, which accelerates nicely towards the conclusion. Along the way we find out a bit more about our hero's family, a little bit more about magic, quite a lot about jazz, and a little glimpse into the country's magical past. I suspect there's more there for future books, but then again I was wrong in my predictions after the last book, so I could be wrong again.

As I hinted above, there is a lot more sex in this book than in the last. It kind of springs out of nowhere and seems a bit out of place, but then you come to realise that actually it is part of the plot and is there for a purpose. It actually does serve to make the conclusion a bit more involving.

There are fewer instances of the clunky writing/editing that I noticed in the first book, although there are still one or two points where the narrative jumps in a slightly disconcerting way - usually when providing a bit of back story for an event or character. But that's a minor niggle.

It becomes apparent that there is a 'Moriarty' type criminal mastermind somewhere in the background in this story and it is both annoying and intriguing in the way that his storyline is not resolved by the end of this book.

The two primary crime stories are both resolved here, one in a satisfactory way, and the other a bit less so. Rather than being a single plotline in its own right, the second murder inquiry becomes merged into the larger 'Moriarty' type plot, so its conclusion is brief and not fully resolved. But don't let you stop that reading this excellent book.

So, should you read this book? Yes, I think so, but only if you read Rivers of London first.

Is it better than its predecessor? No, but its not significantly worse either. More of the same really. If you liked the first, then you'll like the second. And probably the third too.

Will I read the next installment of the story "Whispers Underground" when it is published in the summer? Absolutely, yes.

Loony Dook in 3D

Having downloaded the 3D photo app for my phone, I thought I'd give it a try. Here's two pictures of this year's Loony Dook in 3D. Hope you've got a pair of Red/Cyan specs handy. Utterly pointless, but still...

Doctor Who: Let's kill Hitler [first impressions]

What? Eh? What???

More reasoned thoughts to follow.

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Just finished reading this. It seemed like quite a short book, or maybe I just got engrossed in it and read it faster than usual, its hard to tell when you're reading on a Kindle.

The basic plot (no significant spoilers) is that a young London uniformed police constable gets posted to the scene of an inexplicable murder and interviews one witness, who happens to be a ghost. As a consequence of this and other events, he ends up apprenticed to the London police's only supernatural-investigating inspector. Yes, more or less a London police 'X-Files'.

The plot is interesting, engaging, fast moving and fun. About 3/5ths of the way through the book, you think you see how its going to resolve, and then wonder how the author is going to pad that out for the remaining chapters, and then the plot twists, and twists again, and again. In quite a roller coaster ride of events.

For the most part, the book is well written, but there are a few clunky scenes where it seems that a few lines of dialogue or description are simply missing. For example, at the end of the 2nd murder scene events, one of the characters dies. I read the page about three times and its still unclear to me how they died. In one paragraph they were running past our hero, in the next they were dead and sprawled on the floor, but with no description connecting the two. In a couple of other places (though none as obvious as that one) there seem to be short snippets of description that are simply missing. But its not a huge problem, and didn't really detract from my enjoyment of the story.

You know those detective stories where the male lead character meets attractive female characters and they rapidly find themselves in an explicit sex scene? This isn't one of those stories. There's a nicely written underlying air of unresolved sexual tension that runs through parts of this story as the main character completely fails to have liaisons with his female co-worker and one of the other female characters in the book. The fact that much of the romantic tension still remains at the end of the book suggests to me that the author intends to develop the relationships between these characters over several books, and that very much makes me want to go straight on to the next book, although the reality of an unresolved storyline stretching across three or more books might get annoying after a bit. But maybe it won't come to that.

So, I'd recommend this book to you. Its a lot of fun, is quite interesting, and there's clearly much more involving these characters to come in future books.

Oh, and I've just discovered that Ben Aaronovitch was one of the writers on Doctor Who back in the late 80s. He is responsible for the scene in which a Dalek was first witnessed (by the 7th Doctor and Ace) hovering up the stairs! Actually, I remember that story with some fondness, although the SFX were typically rubbish, as I recall.

And one of the many problems of having a Kindle is that I could simply buy 'Moon over Soho' right now and start reading the next book straight away...

It must be spring... the bike is out again.

Spring must have sprung. I got the bike out of retirement today and cycled to work, for the first time since October. Surprisingly it didn't kill me. MapMyRide.com tells me that the route is 11.7 miles, and it took me 1hr 25min. Hmmm. That's an average of 8.25 mph. Not great. Although, having said that my fastest time of the same route last year came in at only a little over an average of 9 mph.

Perception of time

I have a theory.

It might not be a very good one, and I can't prove it, but (even if somebody else has proposed this before, which they probably have) I did come up with it completely independently.

It relates to our perception of time.

You know how, as you get older, every passing year seems to pass faster than the previous one? Obviously, the actual years are not getting faster, only our perception of them.

My theory is this: Your perception of the speed of time passing is directly related to the amount of time which you have already witnessed passing.

Thus, for me, 1980 was 1/10th of my life, so it seemed to take a long time, whereas 1990 was 1/20th and seemed to pass a lot faster. 2010 was only 1/40th of my life and whooshed past. And so on.

The problem with this, if true, is that I have now realised that most of my perception of life is over, irrespective of how long I live! If I am lucky enough to live to 80 years old (i.e. twice my current age of 40), then my perceived time remaining (1/41 + 1/42 + 1/43 + ... + 1/79 + 1/80) is only 14% of my life, normalised by perception - 86% of my perceived life (1/1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + ... + 1/39 + 1/40) has already passed!

Even if medical science is able to extend my life to 200 years, I've still perceived over 70% of my life already.

If, as some claim, medical science will be able to halt aging within the next few decades, and lifespans of people begin to tend towards hundreds, perhaps a thousand years, then that doesn't deal with the perception problem. By the age of 500 a year passing will be perceived as being faster than a month does for me now. Even if I was to live to be 2000 years old, I've still experienced more than half of my perceived life already!

Presumably, the only way to halt or reverse this acceleration is to forget stuff - effectively reducing the amount of already perceived time?

Kindle!

Reader, I bought one.

Thoughts to follow in due course.